


Beg, Borrow, Steal

by idelthoughts



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Uprooted - Naomi Novik
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-31
Updated: 2016-12-31
Packaged: 2018-09-13 15:32:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9130645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idelthoughts/pseuds/idelthoughts
Summary: Agnieszka never asked to be anyone's padawan.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [maxinia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/maxinia/gifts).



Agnieszka threw herself down onto the floor in the corner of the store room. She was going to scream, or light something on fire, or….or she’d kill him.

That was probably one of those million and one ways to the Dark Side that Master Sarkan was oh-so-fond of listing. Forget to meditate, fall to the Dark Side. Don’t brush your hair properly, fall to the Dark Side. Kill your Jedi Training Master—Dark Side.

“It’d be worth it,” she muttered, and fell on her side to press her cheek to the cold, cool stone. It was spotlessly clean; she’d spent all day yesterday chasing every dust particle out of the room while Sarkan watched, arms crossed and scowling, as her grip on the Force flexed and faded and surged, whipping eddies of dust into tornados, sweeping clear one corner while blasting it into the others, until she was shaking and exhausted.

“What I did to deserve you, I will never know,” Sarkan had snapped and stormed from the room in a flourish of sweeping robes.

More like what had she done to deserve _him_. She didn’t even _want_ to be a Jedi.

On a planet where moisture farms were the only reliable source of water, she alone could find the dew that collected on the _ecchenia_ leaves when she wandered and explored. Though she came home a riotous dusty mess, her parents laughed and kissed her, marvelled over the sweet fresh canteen of water she’d filled as if by magic. But, if she’d known that doing so would mean some overbearing fool would come and declare that she needed ‘training,’ she’d have never done it at all.

She wasn’t supposed to be here; she wasn’t one with the Force or any such nonsense—she was just Agnieszka. Weird, awkward, absent-minded child, as dusty as the inside of a _grava_ gourd husk lying in the fading desert sun, with an ability to find and fall into the only puddle on the entire planet. Kasia; she had the grace, the flow, the natural beauty from within that described the Jedi Knights of old. It took nothing to close her eyes and picture Kasia, shining in the sun, wielding a blade of light—

Agnieszka closed her eyes, and tears escaped, sliding down over her nose to drop onto the stone. What she wouldn’t give to have her friend here.

Everything hurt; she was so, so very tired. Sarkan demanded she repeat each verse from the tomes of Jedi history, repeat the mantras as she supposedly reached out with control, with balance, with the grace and ease he managed. The Force, he said, was the order that made the chaos of life become an organized symphony.

To Agnieszka, the idea of trying to set order to life was as natural as organizing the grains of sand in the desert by size, from largest to smallest, using only your fingers. Let the wind blow; it would sort them for you. Every lesson Sarkan tried to teach her only felt like an impossible uphill struggle. She failed and failed again, able to feel his disapproval like a physical blow.

She sniffled and propped her head up on her hand, elbow on the ground. She dragged her finger through the damp tear stains on the floor—no dust, no grime, only the dry of the stone and the salty wet of her tears. The stone was cold and made her bones ache, but the store room was quiet and afforded her privacy to pity herself.

She hummed to herself, a comforting tune from her childhood, something half-forgotten, as she traced little patterns through the moisture. The pattern spiralled outward, becoming the petals of a flower, and she hummed, smiling as the flecks of gold and green shone from the stone as her finger dragged lines of wetness across them. Her muscles eased and relaxed as she worked, sitting up and setting to her task, until the doodle covered one of the large foot square stone tiles.

“What are you doing?”

Agnieszka jerked upright. Sarkan hovered in the doorway. Instead of his usual dour disapproval, he was looking at her suspiciously.

“Nothing.” She blinked at the tile, the lines of her childish drawing still glistening wet. From one tear, she’d found a cup’s worth of water from nowhere. She looked at her finger stupidly.

Sarkan approached her, staring down at the tile, and then with a huff of irritation stooped down next to her.

“It wasn’t nothing. I could feel it from my study. Didn’t you listen to what I said about balance?” He dragged a finger through the wet, drawing a box around the rose she’d drawn. “To have water here, you take it from elsewhere. You can’t just _take_ things; those kinds of demands create inequalities, create vacuums that chaos fills—”

“No, I didn’t take it.” She frowned, trying to explain. “I… I asked if it would like to be here. And then…” She waved a hand over the streaks of water. This was effortless, easy, natural. Nothing like the draining, endless, impossible manipulations Sarkan demanded of her.

“You _asked_.” He peered at her. “You _asked_?”

She nodded. It wasn’t exactly the right word, but it certainly was closer than the way Sarkan described his methods; his mantras, his meditations, his meticulous order, using the Force as a rulebook to create what he wanted, channeling and organizing life down to the last breath and spark. She couldn’t order things around like that—but if she asked politely, the answer was usually yes.

Sarkan grunted as he pondered the stone, and then made a curt gesture towards her.

“Show me.”

She hesitated, uncertain. It was the first time he’d ever so much as listened to her for more than a handful of seconds at a time, let alone asked her a question.

Sarkan huffed impatiently.

“I haven’t all day.”

She couldn’t help herself; she laughed—they had nothing but all day, all weeks, months if they wanted. There was no one here but them, locked away in his self-imposed hermitage, with her as his barely willing padawan. He looked vaguely offended by her laughter, so she stifled her giggles and shook her head.

“Here, put your finger on the stone.”

Sarkan wasn’t nearly so intimidating when he was pouting and struggling with lessons with exactly the same frustration as she felt day after day.

Maybe this Jedi training thing wasn’t so bad after all.


End file.
